2017 Hurricane Irma Evacuation Survey Data

Following Hurricane Irma in 2017, an online survey was distributed by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley to collect information on the individual choices of those impacted by the storm in Florida. Collected from October to December 2017, the data includes questions regarding risk perceptions, communications, evacuation decisions, potential usage of the sharing economy in disasters, opinions of evacuation management, and demographic information. The survey was distributed with the assistance of local partners (i.e., transportation agencies, emergency management agencies, local city and county governments, CBOs, and news outlets). Partners were allowed to post the survey using electronic communication methods including but not limited to: Facebook, Twitter, Nextdoor, agency websites, news websites, email listservs, and alert subscription services. The survey received 1,263 valid responses, of which 921 were completed. Subsequent papers using this data retained 645 cleaned survey responses for discrete choice modeling, based on the respondents' completion of key choice and demographic questions. The survey was incentivized with the chance to win one of five $200 gift cards. The survey questions are included in a separate PDF document. Please note that Q173-Q197 in the survey questions were not asked to respondents and no data was collected. 

We request that those who download the data send a courtesy email to the lead author, Dr. Stephen Wong (swong1392@gmail.com). To ensure that any new research makes unique contributions to knowledge and does not duplicate past analyses, users are requested to read and cite publications using this data including:

Wong, S., Pel, A., Shaheen, S., Chorus, C. (2020). Fleeing from Hurricane Irma: Empirical Analysis of Evacuation Behavior Using Discrete Choice Theory. Transportation Research Part D: Disasters and Resilience Section. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1361920919312866. Note: The data file can also be accessed via this journal article. 

Wong, S., Walker, J., & Shaheen, S. (2020). Bridging the Gap between Evacuations and the Sharing Economy. Transportation. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11116-020-10101-3.

Wong, S., Shaheen, S., & Walker, J. (2018). Understanding Evacuee Behavior: A Case Study of Hurricane Irma. Report. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9370z127

Additional framing work on evacuations can be found here:

Wong, S. (2020). Compliance, Congestion, and Social Equity: Tackling Critical Evacuation Challenges through the Sharing Economy, Joint Choice Modeling, and Regret Minimization. University of California, Berkeley. Dissertation. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9b51w7h6.